Eisenhower on the Centrality of Nuclear Weapons to US Foreign Policy

Finally, to keep the attack from becoming overly costly, it was clear that
we would have to use atomic weapons.

This necessity was suggested to me by General MacArthur while I, as President-elect,
was still living in New York. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were pessimistic about
the feasibility of using tactical atomic weapons on front-line positions, in
view of the extensive underground fortifications which the Chinese Communists
had been able to construct; but such weapons would obviously be effective for
strategic targets in North Korea, Manchuria, and on the Chinese coast.

If we decided upon a major, new type of offensive, the present policies would
have to be changed and the new ones agreed to by our allies. Foremost would
be the proposed use of atomic weapons. In this respect American views have always
differed somewhat from those of some of our allies. For the British, for example,
the use of atomic weapons in war at that time would have been a decision of
the gravest kind. My feeling was then, and still remains, that it would be impossible
for the United States to maintain the military commitments which it now sustains
around the world (without turning into a garrison state) did we not possess
atomic weapons and the will to use them when necessary. But an American decision
to use them at that time would have created strong disrupting feelings between
ourselves and our allies. However, if an all-out offensive should be highly
successful, I felt that the rifts so caused could, in time, be repaired.

Of course, there were other problems, not the least of which would be the
possibility of the Soviet Union entering the war. In nuclear warfare the Chinese
Communists would have been able to do little. But we knew that the Soviets had
atomic weapons in quantity and estimated that they would soon explode a hydrogen
device. Of all the Asian targets which might be subjected to Soviet bombing,
I was most concerned about the unprotected cities of Japan.